before lunch.”
“Cool.” Jamie tried to contain her smile. Everyone at the beach would see her climbing out of the front seat of Flip Jenkin’s VW bus. It was a scene she had never dared to imagine—and before she could conjure up the infinite ways it could go wrong (Flip forgetting to pick her up, Flip changing his mind about her, Jamie suddenly struck with car sickness on the ride to the beach, etc.) Jamie boldly kissed Flip flat on the mouth until it felt as if she had suckled from him a blissful mindlessness.
4
Flip came with friends. He came to the beach with friends, he came to the movies with friends, he came to Jamie’s house with friends. He was only one beer in a six-pack that was permanently bound by a rubber neck cuff. All his friends were cute, surfers, almost interchangeable in their cool-dude drawl, tawny skin, and disregard for hair-combing, shirts, shoes, glasses, jewelry, and anything that didn’t hang on them like skin.
Betty liked seeing Flip’s friends in the kitchen. She cooked for them, talked to them, laughed at their jokes. By the second week of Jamie’s dating Flip, Betty had yet to walk into the kitchen without a shirt, although she had come fairly close: once wearing a sheer tank top with no bra, and once wearing a loose, diaphanous strappy dress with the arms cut down so low one could see half her breast from the side. Jamie was so relieved that there had been no half-nudity that she never dared mention it to her mother for fear that a recognition of this good service would jinx it and bring it to an end. No one ever spoke to Jamie about her mother’s breasts, but Flip told her, in private, that every one of his friends had a mad, sexual crush on Betty. Jamie was strangely flattered by this thought and, naturally, repulsed.
With his friends eating Irish oatmeal or quesadillas that Betty cooked up, Flip and Jamie often snuck off to the record room on the pretense of changing the music. Closed up in there, they’d make out or grope for as long as was reasonably possible. Betty was so enthralled with her high school admirers that Jamie and Flip often managed to escape for forty minutes, seemingly without having been missed.
Unlike Betty, Allen was uninterested in Flip and his friends. He walked though the kitchen, or by the pool when they were swimming, and looked them over as if he were surprised to see them, as if they were foreigners whose every motion was odd to him. And he never got anyone’s name right, stumbling—Chip, er, uh, Fritz—even when he was talking to Flip.
Tammy and Debbie were mixed into this group, of course. They each dated a couple of Flip’s friends and usually developed crushes on anyone who showed an interest in them.
One day, the boys wanted to go surfing at Hollister Ranch, a private beach about forty miles away. Debbie couldn’t go because her mother wanted her home for supper, and Tammy couldn’t go because they had Family Night at her church.
Jamie didn’t want to sit on the beach alone while the boys surfed, so she stayed back with Debbie and Tammy. Allen and Betty were at the nude beach and Renee was still at Outward Bound, so the girls met up at Jamie’s house.
Lying on towels beside the pool, they dribbled baby oil on one another’s bodies to increase the intensity of their tans, drank warm Tab that Tammy brought over, read Seventeen magazine, and ate carob almonds out of the glass canister Betty used to store what she considered snack food.
Tammy slipped onto a raft and floated off in the pool.
“Hand me the carob,” she said, and Jamie placed the open glass container on Tammy’s brown belly.
Debbie was facedown on her towel, reading, her suit untied in the back to prevent a tan line. Jamie shook out her towel to get rid of carob crumbs, then lay on her belly and looked out at the pool, at the magenta flower beds tucked here and there around the pool, at the sky that was so blue and flat and solid-looking that it resembled an
“Cool.” Jamie tried to contain her smile. Everyone at the beach would see her climbing out of the front seat of Flip Jenkin’s VW bus. It was a scene she had never dared to imagine—and before she could conjure up the infinite ways it could go wrong (Flip forgetting to pick her up, Flip changing his mind about her, Jamie suddenly struck with car sickness on the ride to the beach, etc.) Jamie boldly kissed Flip flat on the mouth until it felt as if she had suckled from him a blissful mindlessness.
4
Flip came with friends. He came to the beach with friends, he came to the movies with friends, he came to Jamie’s house with friends. He was only one beer in a six-pack that was permanently bound by a rubber neck cuff. All his friends were cute, surfers, almost interchangeable in their cool-dude drawl, tawny skin, and disregard for hair-combing, shirts, shoes, glasses, jewelry, and anything that didn’t hang on them like skin.
Betty liked seeing Flip’s friends in the kitchen. She cooked for them, talked to them, laughed at their jokes. By the second week of Jamie’s dating Flip, Betty had yet to walk into the kitchen without a shirt, although she had come fairly close: once wearing a sheer tank top with no bra, and once wearing a loose, diaphanous strappy dress with the arms cut down so low one could see half her breast from the side. Jamie was so relieved that there had been no half-nudity that she never dared mention it to her mother for fear that a recognition of this good service would jinx it and bring it to an end. No one ever spoke to Jamie about her mother’s breasts, but Flip told her, in private, that every one of his friends had a mad, sexual crush on Betty. Jamie was strangely flattered by this thought and, naturally, repulsed.
With his friends eating Irish oatmeal or quesadillas that Betty cooked up, Flip and Jamie often snuck off to the record room on the pretense of changing the music. Closed up in there, they’d make out or grope for as long as was reasonably possible. Betty was so enthralled with her high school admirers that Jamie and Flip often managed to escape for forty minutes, seemingly without having been missed.
Unlike Betty, Allen was uninterested in Flip and his friends. He walked though the kitchen, or by the pool when they were swimming, and looked them over as if he were surprised to see them, as if they were foreigners whose every motion was odd to him. And he never got anyone’s name right, stumbling—Chip, er, uh, Fritz—even when he was talking to Flip.
Tammy and Debbie were mixed into this group, of course. They each dated a couple of Flip’s friends and usually developed crushes on anyone who showed an interest in them.
One day, the boys wanted to go surfing at Hollister Ranch, a private beach about forty miles away. Debbie couldn’t go because her mother wanted her home for supper, and Tammy couldn’t go because they had Family Night at her church.
Jamie didn’t want to sit on the beach alone while the boys surfed, so she stayed back with Debbie and Tammy. Allen and Betty were at the nude beach and Renee was still at Outward Bound, so the girls met up at Jamie’s house.
Lying on towels beside the pool, they dribbled baby oil on one another’s bodies to increase the intensity of their tans, drank warm Tab that Tammy brought over, read Seventeen magazine, and ate carob almonds out of the glass canister Betty used to store what she considered snack food.
Tammy slipped onto a raft and floated off in the pool.
“Hand me the carob,” she said, and Jamie placed the open glass container on Tammy’s brown belly.
Debbie was facedown on her towel, reading, her suit untied in the back to prevent a tan line. Jamie shook out her towel to get rid of carob crumbs, then lay on her belly and looked out at the pool, at the magenta flower beds tucked here and there around the pool, at the sky that was so blue and flat and solid-looking that it resembled an
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